Trevor Gilbert

In the early days of the Internet, its disruptive nature wasn’t a result of technical protocols or flashy GIFs. It was the promise that anyone could head West, set up shop, and succeed based upon their merits, that a startup out of Stanford could organize the world’s information, or that it was possible for a couple of guys to take out an entire industry. It took the ethos of Silicon Valley startups, where the craziest and most brilliant win, and opened it up to the entire world.

Earlier today, Etsy announced a gift card program which will serve as a proprietary payment processing system. Also today, Spotify announced that it would be selling physical gift cards in stores across the United States. This follows companies like Facebook, Apple, and Zynga, that have all sold gift cards at one point or another, all redeemable for virtual goods. More recently, it follows startups like Livrada and larger companies like Google, who are all trying to cash in on the gift card market.

Earlier today, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a set of proposed regulatory changes as part of the implementation of the JOBS Act. The Act, which is supposed to simplify the process for raising capital for startups, gave us the promise of disrupting the venture capital industry. Instead, the SEC has tied up the JOBS Act in red tape, by moving slowly and stalling the implementation of the regulations.

With all of the hoopla surrounding Apple’s decisive victory over Samsung last week, there has been nary a mention of what the company should do next. Having a proven narrative that juries clearly relate to, it has one of the strongest legal positions in the technology industry right now.

Disrupting incumbent technologies is hard, but people still try -- and more power to them. Case in point, the news that Diaspora, the open-source and distributed social network that was once “going to disrupt Facebook,” is changing its structure. The service will be run by the community and the product will be changed by the community, with the central control over the software taken out of the hands of Diaspora.

We’re surrounded by an invisible, chaotic matrix of manipulated frequencies every day. WiFi. 2.4 GHz. 5 GHz. 3G. 4G. 123G. But while these connections are all pointing to the same thing -- the all-knowing Internet -- they are working against each other, when they should be working with each other.

Earlier this summer, Airbnb launched a new feature called Wish Lists, a feature that allows users to create lists of places that they want to visit. For example, users with a penchant for castles can create a dream list of medieval fortresses, while users desiring to get away from the urban sprawl can create a list of secluded spots that they want to get to.

A few years ago, I went on a trip to Morocco with my family. As is normally the case when we travel, we went to a local market in search of good deals on locally made goods. We walk into the market, and it’s suddenly a cacophony of sounds, languages, items being thrown in the air, and merchants pulling us into their stores. All of the stores sold the same thing, but every merchant claimed “my store is the one that you want!” It’s hit-or-miss on actual quality.